Bringing Array Themes into the WP Engine Family

When it comes to WordPress themes, there’s a crowded marketplace out there that can often feel difficult to navigate. Yet, at the end of the day, all site owners want to have is a stunning, functional website and an easy path to get there.

Sifting through the thousands of themes in existence today is a daunting task, and finding the right one for your website is just part of the challenge. No one wants to trust their portfolio, online magazine, or e-commerce site to just any formulaic theme. Making sure it’s well designed, well coded, and vetted by the WordPress community adds another dimension of complexity to an already exhausting process.

One of the reasons WP Engine acquired StudioPress this past June was because its impressive catalog of themes are based on the world’s most popular theme framework, Genesis. We were attracted to StudioPress because we wanted to make its themes more accessible to customers and invest in an expansion of those themes.

Today, we’re adding to that vision by bringing Array’s themes, as well as the associated Atomic Blocks, into the WP Engine family. Array is trusted by brands such as Dropbox and TED, and for nearly a decade, its theme collection has been used by thousands of designers, photographers, writers, and a wide variety of creative professionals for beautiful, out-of-the-box themes that combine a sophisticated design look with robust functionality in an engaging layout.

More recently, Array’s Atomic Blocks library has emerged as a go-to source for creative, easy-to-use Gutenberg blocks that leverage the new WordPress editor. Atomic Blocks is the most popular and most downloaded library of beautiful, responsive, and customizable blocks for Gutenberg. It allows users to add great-looking elements to their web pages at significantly reduced turnaround times that convert at higher rates, all without touching a line of code.

As we continue to expand our portfolio of Genesis-based themes, we’ll look to the style and design look Array has employed so successfully to create themes that deliver a new level of value and agility for WordPress users and businesses of all sizes. And as we continue to help our customers lead with Gutenberg, we’ll employ Atomic Blocks in more of the new themes we’re adding to the Genesis universe.

Today, design is just as important to a theme as the code that’s used to build it. This is true as more and more businesses compete on the basis of a compelling user experience, where design aesthetic and intuitiveness of the site are core differentiators. If that’s lacking, potential customers will go elsewhere.

At WP Engine, we’ve realized this is just as important as the speed and SEO that helps you show up in search rankings, or the analytics and targeting features that help you cater to narrower sets of demographics. Great-looking websites are the basis of effective digital experiences, and with our acquisition of Array, we’re bolstering our ability to arm our customers with the tools they need to create the best sites on the web.

Another aspect of this acquisition is the talent we’re adding to further strengthen our theme capabilities. Array’s founder Mike McAlister, a pillar of the WordPress community, will join WP Engine, adding his creative skills to a number of the exciting projects we’re working on. John Parris, who contributed to Array Themes and has extensive WordPress experience, has also joined WP Engine.

We’re excited about all of these developments—the new styles we’ll be incorporating into future Genesis themes, the added ease and functionality we’ll be able to provide for Gutenberg, and the addition of Mike and John to our team. But most of all, we’re looking forward to the great-looking websites our customers are going to build, as we continue to find new ways to help them win online.

Wow, this is huge 🙂 I love Array themes. WP Engine is on the role. Also, the Atomic blocks plugin is based on top of my create-guten-block toolkit that I developed with help from folks like you. Thank you, WPEngine.

We too love Array Theme! Since the Array Themes are being sunset and are not going to be converted to the Genesis Framework, we wish Michael and John all the luck in improving the quality of the StudioPress themes. Array Themes has been Quality over Quantity while we perceive StudioPress as unimpressive with Quantity over Quality. Generally, mergers don’t go well, but we are optimistic Michael and John will be able to turn out better designed StudioPress products. Modern Drupal sites seem to be so much better designed these days so we ask WP Engine to up their design game considerably!

[…] serve the community that relies on it. While we’ve already begun doing that through investment in new theme capabilities and developer talent, as well as the release of new, Gutenberg-ready StudioPress themes, we’re now expanding that […]

Hey Yves. This is David with WP Engine here. We will be rebuilding the Array Themes in a Genesis context and will be offering them on WP Engine and on the StudioPress website in the future. As of this time we are not offering or supporting the existing Array themes. That being said, Mike McAllister, formerly of Array, is currently working on updates to the StudioPress themes to optimize them for Gutenberg and Atomic Blocks. Mike will also be helping us create all new themes for StudioPress which will be free on the WP Engine platform. While you can’t get the Array themes anymore, I think you’ll like what the team is working on!

We don’t have a specific date for those themes being rebuilt on Genesis and released on StudioPress / WP Engine; however, Mike McAllister formerly of Array, Inc. (now with WP Engine) is working in partnership with Brian Gardner on a new Genesis powered theme which will be released on StudioPress & within the WP Engine platform. So while we don’t have a time frame yet for Array Themes being converted, Mike (the person who designed those themes) is working on a new theme which should release in the next 60 days or so. Hope that helps!

I currently have Arrays Paperback theme. I’m assuming once the licence expires (Feb 19) there will be no further support or updates made available? Is this one of the themes which is planned to be ‘Studiopressed’? If so will it be available as a free download for current pro-plan members?

Hey Dave. Array, Inc. will provide customer support for that theme based on your agreement with them, yet that theme won’t be receiving updates in the future. Paperback may be repurposed with Genesis, but it would be different tech, so you should think of it as a new theme (if it comes out) vs. a new version of the existing theme. Any theme we release will be available to SP pro plus and all WPE customers 🙂

Hey Sean. Thanks for your question. We aren’t currently distributing the Array Themes as our theme support team is structured around Genesis themes; however, we are using the Array Themes’ designs as inspiration for future Genesis based themes and of course we’re continuing to invest in and improve Atomic Blocks. You can check out all the themes we currently distributing here… https://wpengine.com/studiopress-themes/. I hope this helps. Thanks!

Hello Anne Marie. I’m happy to help out as best I can. The 1 year of extended support offered by Array, Inc. ended in October, so unfortunately you won’t be able to get support there. That being said, I may have some options to help you out. So I can better direct you from here, could you describe the issue that you need support with?

Of course, if I end up being able to resolve your question / issue myself, I’ll just do that 🙂